The full amount of this threat Mr Palliser understood, and, as he thought of it, he acknowledged to himself that he had never felt for Lady Dumbello anything like love.  No conversation between them had ever been warmer than that of which the reader has seen a sample.  Lady Dumbello had been nothing to him.  But now,—­now that the matter had been put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already been linked with his own?  We all know that story of the priest, who, by his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the horses’ teeth.  “I never did yet,” said the ostler, “but I’ll have a try at it.”  In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr Palliser, before the night was over, had almost become as ready a pupil as the ostler.  As to the threat, it would ill become him, as a Palliser and a Plantagenet, to regard it.  The duke would not marry.  Of all men in the world he was the least likely to spite his own face by cutting off his own nose; and, for the rest of it, Mr Palliser would take his chance.  Therefore he went down to Hartlebury early in February, having fully determined to be very particular in his attentions to Lady Dumbello.

Among a houseful of people at Hartlebury, he found Lord Porlock, a slight, sickly, worn-out looking man, who had something about his eye of his father’s hardness, but nothing in his mouth of his father’s ferocity.

“So your sister is going to be married?” said Mr Palliser.

“Yes.  One has no right to be surprised at anything they do, when one remembers the life their father leads them.”

“I was going to congratulate you.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I met him at Courcy, and rather liked him.”

Mr Palliser had barely spoken to Mr Crosbie at Courcy, but then in the usual course of his social life he seldom did more than barely speak to anybody.

“Did you?” said Lord Porlock.  “For the poor girl’s sake I hope he’s not a ruffian.  How any man should propose to my father to marry a daughter out of his house, is more than I can understand.  How was my mother looking?”

“I didn’t see anything amiss about her.”

“I expect that he’ll murder her some day.”  Then that conversation came to an end.

Mr Palliser himself perceived—­as he looked at her he could not but perceive—­that a certain amount of social energy seemed to enliven Lady Dumbello when he approached her.  She was given to smile when addressed, but her usual smile was meaningless, almost leaden, and never in any degree flattering to the person to whom it was accorded.  Very many women smile as they answer the words which are spoken to them, and most who do so flatter by their smile.  The thing is so common that no one thinks of it.  The flattering pleases, but means nothing.  The impression unconsciously taken simply conveys a feeling that the woman has made herself